Today is Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day.
Accelerating progress towards universal health coverage means stopping the leading cause of death globally: NCDs.
According to the NCD Alliance, "approximately 100 million people are pushed into poverty every year as a result of out-of-pocket payments for health care, a large proportion of which are due to NCDs."
Financing NCDs and UHC are not mutually exclusive global health priorities.
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HFI Updates: Launch of Multi-Donor Trust Fund Business Plan and Oman meeting
This past summer, HFI was commissioned by the WHO High-Level Commission on NCDs to develop a business plan for the first ever global catalytic fund for NCDs. This included a scoping document, series of stakeholder consultations, and a structured review of development funds. The report was launched at the WHO Global Meeting to Accelerate Progress on SDG 3.4 in Oman. Click here to view the outline business plan.
In addition, the WHO High Level Commission on NCDs released their Final Report and a set of eight recommendations. Notably, the eight recommendation is "WHO should advocate for the establishment of a multi-donor trust fund (MDTF) for NCDs and mental health conditions based on public health needs." Also in Oman, HFI's Andrea Feigl moderated a panel on scaling up domestic financing for NCDs and mental health and the role of development assistance, innovative financing and blended financing.
We look forward to supporting the WHO and partners in the next steps of establishing the MDTF.
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Launch of the WHO High-Level Commission on NCDs Final Report, which includes a recommendation on advocating for a multi-donor trust fund (MDTF) for NCDs and mental health
(Left to Right): Gene Bukhman, Harvard Medical School/Partners in Health; Rachel Nugent, RTI; Elfatih Abdelraheem, UNDP Istanbul; Bent Lautrup-Nielsen, World Diabetes Foundation; Vindya Kumarapeli, Ministry of Health Sri Lanka; Nick Banatvala, WHO; and Andrea Feigl, HFI
Andrea Feigl with Head of NCDs of Oman Ministry of Health, during site visit to public health clinic |
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HFI Updates: HFI at Wilton Park
From November 25-27, one year after the publication of the Broadband Commission Working Group Digital Health report, diverse stakeholders from government, private sector, and other organizations came together to discuss how digital health care can contribute to the prevention, treatment, and management of NCDs at Wilton Park. Specifically, national digital health strategies and systems offering cost effective solutions were explored and discussions focused on how information and communication technologies (ICT) can be harnessed to improve health outcomes. HFI’s Dr. Andrea Feigl joined the dialogue and provided her expert opinion in a panel on digital health solutions and NCD financing. Below she shares her key takeaways from the event with us.
- Digital tools have the potential to enable the diagnosis, delivery, and tracking of healthcare services.
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Exciting new tools like Babylon and Ada provide a glimpse into how digital tools will personalize medicine and become integral tools for the pre-diagnosis and health tracking of conditions.
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While the digitization of healthcare diagnosis and delivery hold great promise, technology has to fit reality. Resolve to Save Lives’ development of the Simple app successfully appears to tackle this challenge.
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Data protection policies need to be enacted to make sure that knowledge about health conditions will not be used to discriminate against individuals. Meanwhile, nimble regulations are also needed to ensure evidence-based apps prevail.
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Health and cost data need to be stronger and tracked over time to create system efficiencies and save on healthcare spending by focusing on interventions with the greatest health and economic impact.
(Left to Right): Nicole Fraser, World Bank; Andrea Feigl, HFI; and Rachel Nugent, RTI
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The Third Roadblock to Financing the NCD Response
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Launched alongside WHA 2019, HFI developed an initial roadmap of financing solutions to mobilize and optimize resources to meet the roadblocks for the NCD response. As part of our roadblock series, we will look at Roadblock #3.
Limitations in technical capacity hinder progress across many sectors within the greater development portfolio, and it is an area that continues to plague NCD financing. Often the lack of absorptive and technical capacity perpetuates the NCD financing poverty trap. How, for example, can a strong argument for funding be made if there is no technical assistance or capacity to scale-up activities when funding arrives? One potential solution to Roadblock #3 is to ensure that catalytic, partner supported funding is available. This would ensure that countries and technical implementers have the absorptive capacity to deliver on NCD initiatives.
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Introducing Vanessa Candeias and Nina Rawal to the HFI Advisory Board
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Vanessa Candeias,
formerly World Economic Forum
Vanessa Candeias was recently the Head of Global Health and Healthcare Industries and a Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum (WEF). She led a dynamic platform for businesses, governments, civil society and world class experts to shape the global health agenda, co-design and accelerate the implementation of partnerships across the continuum of care. There, she was responsible for the work on NCDs including the economic burden of NCDs in collaboration with Harvard School of Public Health, the return on investment for NCD prevention and the role of private sector in NCDs. She previously worked with the WHO Headquarters on global guidelines, technical assistance and policy development for NCDs and at the national level on health promotion policies with the Ministry of Health in Portugal and the Institute of Preventive Medicine of the University of Lisbon. She trained as a nutritionist at the Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences in Porto University, holds a Master’s in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and graduated as a Global Leadership Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
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Nina Rawal,
emerging health ventures
Dr. Nina Rawal is the founder of emerging health ventures, a global health focused venture capital fund. Her previous experience includes the role as Head of Life Science at Industrifonden, Boston Consulting Group in Stockholm and New York, and VP Strategy and Ventures at Gambro. She serves as advisor to Medecins Sans Frontieres' Innovation Unit and on the nomination committee at Stockholms Sjukhem, a non-profit hospital. She holds a MSc in Biomedicine and a PhD in Molecular Neurobiology, both from the Karolinska Institute, with research work done at Columbia University in New York and Hopital la Salpetriere in Paris. Recognition for her work includes the selection as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and '40 under 40 - European Young Leader' by Friends of Europe/Europanova.
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Resources
Upcoming Events
- Prince Mahidol Conference: UHC Forum 2020, Accelerating Progress towards UHC, 28 January-2 February 2020, Bangkok, Thailand
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Third Global NCD Alliance Forum, 9-11 February 2020, Sharjah, UAE, organized by the NCD Alliance
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19th International Congress on Infectious Disease, 20-23 February 2020, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, organized by the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ICID) and Malaysian Society of Infectious Disease & Chemotherapy (MSIDC).
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Get Involved
We look forward to working together to move beyond the dialogue for NCDs financing to actionable steps. If you are interested in exploring opportunities to engage and partner, please contact our team:
Dr. Andrea Feigl
Founder & Executive Director
andrea@healthfinanceinstitute.org
Surabhi Bhatt
Co-Founder & Director of Strategy and Operations
surabhi@healthfinanceinstitute.org
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Donate to HFI
Please consider making a donation to support our work.
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Connect with HFI
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